[Openfontlibrary] Fwd: [ATypI] Disallowing Font Modification

[Dave Crossland]

:-)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: TEH <ted at fontlab.com>
Date: 11-Jul-2007 19:57
Subject: Re: [ATypI] Disallowing Font Modification
To: ATypI member discussion list <members at atypi.org>


All,
   I have to emphasize that Fontlab is not interested in DRM nor in
policing font licenses. We are interested in making it as easy as
possible for people to be honest - i.e. to adhere to their font EULA.
   In our view the way this should work is that whenever a user opens a
font in any program that is capable of using or modifying a font the
font EULA should be checked against the intended usage and the user
notified if there is a discrepancy.
   It would be impossible to check every EULA attribute against every
possible usage, so we have hammered out an abstract of what the people
who participated considered to be the most important EULA features.
This electronic EULA abstract (EEULAA) idea has been scripted by the
folks at Paragraph into an application which can create an OpenType
table that includes all the EEULAA information and add it to an
OpenType font.
   Our idea at this point is to create a Read-Only EEULAA DLL which we
will license freely to any application developer who wants to
incorporate it into their product. Many companies, including both major
font manager developers, have expressed a keen interest in doing this.
It should be ready by the end of this year.
   Of course Fontlab font editor products will have Read-Write EEULAA
capabilities so that font foundries can put EEULAAs into their font
products and modify them as necessary. We hope other font editor
products will follow suite.

   From the practical viewpoint we envision a scenario like this: User
opens a font in, say, TypeTool. As the font opens TypeTool checks the
EEULAA and sees that it doesn't allow modifications. It pops up a
message window which says "The EULA for this font doesn't allow
modification. If you would like to purchase a license extension for
font modification please browse to www.fontfoundry.com/licenses". The
user browses to fontfoundry.com and chooses a license extension. They
pay for it; upload their font file; the EEULAA is appropriately
updated; the font file is sent back to them; and they proceed with
their job.

Regards,
Ted Harrison
Fontlab Ltd.



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-- 
Regards,
Dave